FALL 2019

The President's Distinguished Speaker Series presents U.S. Senator Mike Braun.

Senator Braun graduated from Wabash in 1976. He majored in economics and as President of the Student Body. He went on to earn his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1978. Senator Braun is the founder and CEO of Meyer Distributing and owner of Meyer Logistics. Meyer's corporate headquarters is located in Jasper, Indiana. He was elected to the United States Senate in 2018.

Will discusses his favorite crosswords and puzzle makers, how crosswords are created, their curious history, and his lifelong passion for puzzles in general. He will also answer questions about puzzles and conduct audience participation word games. This is an informative, fun, brain-stimulating, interactive program for all ages!

Unholding is an exhibition of metal work and silverpoint drawings by Jessica Mohl. This recent body of work investigates the pattern of cycles and impermanence found in nature. Mohl draws on the beauty of overlooked ephemera, from seedpods to cocoons, to create drawings and sculptures using traditional metalsmithing techniques.

Artist Biography: Jessica Mohl received her BFA in the Fine Arts and Crafts from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and her MFA in Metalsmithing from the University of North Texas. Her work has been included in national and international exhibitions and has been published in the Lark Books series 500 Metal Vessels. She primarily works with non-ferrous metals and uses traditional metalsmithing techniques. In her work, she explores the beauty and mystery of growth and cycles in the natural world. She currently lives in Indiana and teaches jewelry and metalsmithing classes at Purdue University.

The Bellbirds' Morning Song surveys a range of two-dimensional images and three-dimensional sculptures created for recent short films by Damon Mohl. The exhibition includes full-scale and miniature sets, costumes as well as detailed props, all of which function as individual works as well as the physical remnants of broader ephemeral cinematic ideas.

Artist Biography: Damon Mohl is a Wabash College assistant professor of Art specializing in studio and digital production courses that range from drawing and painting to various approaches to digital filmmaking and experimental animation. He received his BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and his MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder. With his graduate-level research focused on filmmaking, his thesis film was nominated in the experimental category for a Student Academy Award and screened in the regional winner’s showcase at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. In the past seven years, his work has screened internationally in over thirty countries.

The LaFollette Lecture Series was established by the Wabash College Board of Trustees to honor Charles D. LaFollette, their longtime colleague on the Board. A successful businessman, Mr. LaFollette was a devoted friend of the humanities and the arts.

The LaFollette Lecture is given annually by a Wabash College faculty member who is charged to address the relation of his or her special discipline to the humanities, broadly conceived.
A reception will follow in Littell Lobby.

Eugene Jerome is a young army recruit during World War II, going through basic training and learning about Life and Love with a capital 'L' along with some harsher lessons, while stationed at boot camp in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1943.

Biloxi Blues opened on Broadway in the Neil Simon Theater on March 28, 1985, and won the Tony Award for Best Play that same year.

Nicole Ver Kuilen is an amputee triathlete and subject of the documentary 1500 Miles. Nicole lost her left leg below the knee to bone cancer at age 10 and has made it her life's goal to expand access to prosthetic technology for all amputees. The founder of Forrest Stump, a nonprofit advocacy organization raising the standard of care for amputees, Nicole will talk about her journey as an amputee, the 1,500-mile journey down the west coast, and her successful summit of Cotopaxi, a 19,347-foot volcano.

Sedaris made his comic début on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, reading “SantaLand Diaries,” which recounted his strange but true experience working as a Macy’s elf clad in green tights. His original radio pieces can often be heard on the show “This American Life.” In 2001, Sedaris became the third recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. In 2001, he was named “Humorist of the Year” by Time. In 2005, he was nominated for two Grammy Awards for Best Spoken Word Album (“Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim”) and Best Comedy Album (“David Sedaris: Live at Carnegie Hall”).

Manual Cinema is a performance collective, design studio, and film/ video production company founded in 2010 by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia Miller, and Kyle Vegter.

Manual Cinema combines handmade shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, and innovative sound and music to create immersive visual stories for stage and screen. Using vintage overhead projectors, multiple screens, puppets, actors, live feed cameras, multi-channel sound design, and a live music ensemble, Manual Cinema transforms the experience of attending the cinema and imbues it with liveness, ingenuity, and theatricality.

The End of TV depicts the promise and decline of the American rust belt, through the stories of Flo and Louise, both residents of a fictional Midwestern city. Flo is an elderly white woman who was once a supervisor at the thriving local auto plant. Now succumbing to dementia, the memories of her life are tangled with television commercials and the “call now” demands of QVC. Louise, a young black woman laid off from her job when the same local auto plant closes, meets Flo when she takes a job as a Meals-on-Wheels driver. An unlikely relationship grows as Flo approaches the end of her life and Louise prepares for the invention of a new one. Their story is intercut with commercials and TV programs, the constant background of their environment.

The End of TV premiered in June, 2017 as a commission by The International Festival of Arts and Ideas, New Haven, CT.

The Christmas Festival, which started at Wabash in 1968, alternates performance of musical numbers, congregational hymns and carols, and readings from the Bible. It is modeled on the King’s College Festival of Lessons and Carols at Cambridge University in England. The musical prelude begins at 7:30 p.m. Reception to follow in the Sparks Center, Great Hall.

SPRING 2020

Steel Betty lives at the crossroads of what makes Austin, Texas the engine driving traditional music in America. Flavors of bluegrass, folk, blues, Tex-Mex, Old Time music, and classic country, are a reflection of today’s American music scene.

Steel Betty, the hip, virtuosic trio, embraces Austin’s eclectic culture and brings this lively music out of Texas for the rest of the country to experience. David McD (guitar, vocals), Maddy Froncek (banjo, upright bass, vocals), and Micah Motenko (mandolin, piano, vocals) are multi-instrumentalists capturing the sounds and harmonies of Austin like no other ensemble. Music of Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, spirituals, the Conjunto tradition, and more highlight Steel Betty’s performances.

The trio often conducts workshops for aspiring musicians and students and has a wonderful, interactive program for schools introducing children to the great variety and depth of music from their part of America.

Noli Me Tangere, “touch me not” or “don’t thread on me,” (Latin) is a series of photographs that examines the intersection of homosexuality and religion. Named after a seminal novel by Philippine hero and martyr: Jose Rizal, the photographs extend a conversation concerning repressions brought by religion, culture, and politics. Rooted in the artist’s Filipino Roman Catholic upbringing, the genesis of the series can be charged to the signing of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 2015. This political juncture underlines the interchange between church, state, and marginalized groups they oppress. The often chaotic and conflicting intersections between these entities manifests itself in variations within the artist and members of the LGBTQ+ community. A veneration of sorts, the series borrows the visual language of religious art made new with accents of queer visual vocabulary. The work recontextualizes Catholic narratives and imagery by the insertion of queer community members and allies. It aims to carve a space for an alternative narrative and representation, and aims to interrupt our intrinsic communal understanding of the religious canon.

Artist Biography: Kelvin Burzon is a Filipino-American artist and educator whose work explores intersections of sexuality, race, gender and religion. He graduated from Wabash College and received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Indiana University’s School of Art + Design. His work has been exhibited abroad and all over the country and is a part of several permanent collections including The Kinsey Institute and the Center for Photography at Woodstock. He’s presented his work at several conventions including the Society of Photographic Educations regional and national conferences and The Filipinx-American Library retreat in San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum.

The 20th annual Roger H. Ide Organ Recital will take place on Sunday, February 16 at 3:00 p.m. in the Pioneer Chapel. The recital will be presented on the college's lovingly restored 1935 3-manual, 28-rank Aeolian/Skinner pipe organ. No tickets are required. Free and open to the public. A light dessert reception will follow. For more information, contact Julia Phipps

Separated from his mother, a young refugee called Anon journeys through the United States, encountering a wide variety of people -- some kind, some dangerous and cruel -- as he searches for his family. From a sinister one-eyed butcher to beguiling barflies to a sweatshop, Anon must navigate through a chaotic, ever-changing landscape in this entrancing adaptation of Homer's Odyssey.

Luke Messer graduated from Wabash College in 1991, where he was a member of Phi Delta Theta and a speech major. Luke received a law degree from Vanderbilt University Law School in 1994 and served in the Indiana House of Representatives. Luke enjoys spending time with his wife of 16 years, his three children and his three dogs. He teaches Sunday School and coaches youth sports - he was named McLean Youth Basketball 4th and 5th grade coach of the year. Luke is the author of Hoosier Heart, a children's book about Indiana's people, geography and culture.

Kathleen Parker is a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post. A columnist since 1987, she has worked for five newspapers and several magazines. Her columns appear in more than 400 media outlets, both online and in print. Kathleen is a consulting faculty member at the Buckley School of Public Speaking, a popular guest on cable and network news shows and a regular panelist on NBC's "Meet the Press" and MSNBC's "Hardball" with Chris Matthews. She won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for a selection of political opinion columns.

She will give the Free Speech Keynote Lecture as part of the President's Distinguished Speaker Series.

Wednesday – Saturday, April 22-25
Theater Production: Public Enemy by Henrik Ibsen in a version by David Harrower
Director: James Cherry
Ball Theater, Fine Arts Center
8:00 p.m.Tickets are Required

When Dr. Stockmann discovers that the waters of a new public spa are toxic, he expects gratitude and glory. Instead, his revelation makes him the most hated man in town. Henrik Ibsen's timeless story of corruption, pollution and courage opened in David Harrower's powerful new version at the Young Vic, London, in May 2013.